DeMatteis Dean Sina Rabbany: Taking a Break

I want to welcome all students back for the Spring 2019 semester. Our December graduating class was our largest yet, in part because it included many seniors who had taken off a semester to work in the co-op program. It’s been great to see how many of them have started full-time jobs this month with the same companies where they had their co-op experience. The new semester begins after a long break of almost 40 days, a conducive element of our students’ intellectual development. It also provided the faculty with the opportunity to focus on research and seek funding initiatives

This year the
long break gave us an opportunity to roll out a new initiative, the Hofstra in Silicon Valley program. A
select group of fourteen Computer Science students was chosen to accompany
faculty advisor Dr. Jianchen Shan on a one-week tour of seven companies located
in that region of California, which is noted for its concentration of high-tech
companies. The businesses the students visited represented distinct areas of
specialization, and each had its own ethos and work environment. During the tour,
which began January 13th, students visited companies including Apple (consumer electronics), EFI (digital
imagery), Facebook (social networking), Gigamon (security), SoFi (finance), and
Sony and ILM (both in digital entertainment).

The students were able to talk with engineers and other industry experts and see for themselves what a typical day in the lives of these professionals is like. Some of the contacts made were with Hofstra alumni, but all the connections made will benefit these students in the future. In fact, nine students were interviewed for potential internships or full-time positions. One of the major skill sets that our students brought to the table in these interactions is their involvement in the Facebook Cybersecurity Certification Program, implemented in our computer science department. Their meeting with Facebook security engineers was one of the most beneficial in pointing them to build on those skill sets and accumulate pertinent project experience.

I enjoyed this
trip since it also gave me the opportunity to connect with our alumni and meet
admitted students who live in northern
California. I certainly want to thank Dr. Shan for taking the time to lead this
trip, which more than met our expectations for a first-time venture. He himself
found several areas of mutual interest on projects related to his own research
area, so the connections between Hofstra and Silicon Valley firms may grow
through collaborative research projects as well.

The success of Hofstra
in Silicon Valley suggests that similar programs can be developed for other
targeted subsets of our majors, and that is a topic I hope to explore with our advisory
board, as well as with faculty in our departments, in the near future. The more
we can connect our students with current
state-of-the-art advances in the technological arena, the more confident our
students will be when they take that step from the world of the university,
with its own slower calendar, to the fast-paced world of industry that awaits them.